‘New COVID-19 cases continue to drop’

MANILA, Philippines — The average number of new COVID-19 cases in the country continued to decrease in the past week, a member of the OCTA Research Group said yesterday.

Citing data from the Department of Health, OCTA fellow Guido David noted that the peak of the recent surge in infections was recorded from Sept. 11 to 17, when the average daily new cases reached 20,672.

From Sept. 1 to Oct. 1, the country logged an average of 16,023 new cases per day, down from 18,408 in the preceding week.

The country’s record number of cases was reported on Sept. 11 at 26,303.

“At the current rate, the country may average less than 10,000 per day after three or four weeks,” David said.

He said the public should not be complacent because many areas are still at high risk for COVID cases.

”Hospital intensive care units are at high occupancy and some provinces are still having a surge in cases,” David said.

He cited Metro Manila, Cavite, Rizal, Laguna and Batangas, which are considered as high risk even with a downward trend in average new cases.

36 Baguio areas locked down

Meanwhile, in Baguio City, 36 areas in 20 barangays were placed on lockdown as of Sept. 27 to prevent the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant.

At a virtual management committee meeting on Tuesday, the city disaster risk reduction and management office said granular lockdowns would continue to be imposed in areas found to have critical clusters of infections and low compliance with minimum public health standards.

The lockdowns will allow authorized and trained personnel to conduct contact tracing and disinfection activities.

As this developed, city health services officer Rowena Galpo said all public and private hospitals in the city reached their maximum capacity, with critical care utilization rate pegged at 100.52 percent as of yesterday.

Galpo said the occupancy rate of isolation beds and mechanical ventilators were at 103.8 percent and 100 percent, respectively.

Baguio recorded 311 new cases on Friday, bringing the active infections to 4,401. – Artemio Dumlao